Research surveys

Economic growth necessitates extensive churning and restructuring, the bulk of which is about shifts from less to more successful firms within the same industry. Labor market institutions favoring reallocation and dynamism include portability of tenure rights, fully actuarial and portable pension plans, a full decoupling of health insurance from the current employer, decentralized and individualized wage-setting arrangements and government income insurance systems that encourage activation, mobility and risk-taking.

The literature on the relationship between the size of government and economic growth is full of seemingly contradictory findings. This conflict is largely explained by variations in definitions and the countries studied. An alternative approach – of limiting the focus to studies of the relationship in rich countries, measuring government size as total taxes or total expenditure relative to GDP and relying on panel data estimations with variation over time – reveals a more consistent picture: The most recent studies find a significant negative correlation: An increase in government size by 10 percentage points is associated with a 0.5 to 1 percent lower annual growth rate.

This article surveys the literature and adds to the evidence on the impact of employment protection legislation on employment. While stringent employment protection contributes to less turnover and job reallocation, the effects on aggregate employment and unemployment over the business cycle are more uncertain. Exploitation of partial reforms and the use of micro data in recent research appear not to have affected results regarding employment and unemployment in any systematic way. Labour market prospects of young people and other marginal groups seem to worsen as a consequence of increased stringency of the legislation.

It is debatable whether marginal groups have gained much from the widespread policy strategy to liberalize regulations of temporary employment and leave regulations of regular employment intact. My own analysis suggests that increased stringency of regulations for regular work is associated with a higher incidence of involuntary temporary employment, particularly among the young.

Private equity buyouts have become a common element in the industrial development process. I survey the literature on the real economic effect of buyouts: employment, wages, productivity, and long-run investments. Employment tends to marginally fall after a buyout in most countries studied, with France being the exception. There are clear evidence of productivity gains following a buyout, with part of these being shared with workers through higher wages. The evidence is mixed regarding the effects on long-run investments.

We survey the literature on social networks by putting together the economics, sociological and physics/applied mathematics approaches, showing their similarities and differences.

Public policy is currently shifting from SME policy towards entrepreneurship policy, which supports entrepreneurship without directing attention to quantitative goals and specific firms or employment groups.

In 2004, the public sector in the OECD countries spent approximately USD 190 billion on research and development (R&D), which corresponds to almost 30 per cent of all the R&D (USD 650 billion) conducted in these countries. If we examine who carries out R&D, we can see that the private sector accounts for 68 per cent, Government research institutes (laboratories) for 12 percent, universities for 17 per cent and other nonprofit organisations for 3 per cent. Here there are cases where the Government funds R&D in the business/industrial sector and vice versa, but in Europe the overwhelming majority of Government funding goes to Government-controlled universities and research institutes.

It is often claimed that small and young firms account for a disproportionately large share of net employment growth. We conduct a meta analysis of the empirical evidence regarding whether net employment growth rather is generated by a few rapidly growing firms – so-called Gazelles – that are not necessarily small and young. Gazelles are found to be outstanding job creators. They create all or a large share of new net jobs. On average, Gazelles are younger and smaller than other firms, but it is young age more than small size that is associated with rapid growth. Gazelles also seem to be overrepresented in services.

Taxation theory rarely takes entrepreneurship into consideration. We discuss how this omission affects conclusions derived from standard models of capital taxation when applied to entrepreneurial income.

This paper presents a survey of the literature on property rights and economic growth. It discusses different theoretical mechanisms that relate property rights to economic development. Lack of protection of property rights can result in slow economic growth through different channels: expropriation of private wealth, corruption of civil servants, excessive taxation and barriers to adoption of new technologies. The origins of property rights are also considered. Different theories are illustrated but more attention is paid to the “social conflict view” and its strengths and limitations. The second part of the paper illustrates relevant empirical works on property rights and growth.

This paper surveys the law and economics literature on WTO dispute settlement. As a background, we first briefly lay out main features of the legal framework, and discuss possible roles of a dispute settlement mechanism. We then discuss the two main themes in the empirical literature on dispute settlement: (i) the determinants of participation by members as complainants, respondents and third parties; and (ii) the role of the DS system for the settling of disputes. The paper finally points to a number of areas that are in need of further research.